The Lady and the Laird

by Maura Seger

  "The last Wyndham who lived here, Francis Wyndham," she asked, "was he one of those who searched for the treasure?"

  "As a matter of fact, he was. But he had no more luck than any of the others."

  "Not while he was alive," Katlin said softly.

  "What was that, miss?"

  "Nothing, I was just thinking out loud.'' She stood up. "Thank you for the tea."

  "I'm glad to do it, miss. You should have another of those—" Mrs. Fergus stopped. Katlin was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Charles was not in the best of moods when he returned to his temporary lodgings at the St. Johns's manor. In point of fact, his mood was nothing short of filthy.

  The disappointing hunt with its lack of blood had been bad enough, but Katlin's attitude was inexplicable. Who did the chit think she was, telling him not to make his suit because it would be rejected? She should have been down on her knees thanking the Almighty for the day he—Charles, not God—had deigned to notice her. But no, she had incomprehensibly chosen Innishffarin over him.

  Or had she?

  A nasty frown distorted the otherwise unremarkable features of the baron as he removed himself from the back of his tired and lathered horse, tossed the reins to a groom and walked in the direction of the manor.

  She had said that her decision had nothing to do with Angus Wyndham, but Charles didn't believe her. That a woman might choose independence and struggle over a life of comfort at the side of a wealthy man was unthinkable.

  There had to be a man in the picture. She was a woman; she couldn't function on her own. If he, Charles David Louis Randall Devereux, wasn't the object of her affections, then someone else damn well had to be. And that meant Angus Wyndham.

  Charles knocked his riding crop against his boot as he shoved one of the large French doors that fronted the west side of the manor. He strode through the library and into the main hall, scowling with the force of his thoughts.

  Damn the man! He was arrogant, insufferable, impertinent, a blackguard who refused to recognize the superiority of his betters, upon which the entire structure of society rested. Why, he was practically a rebel sitting up in his great Scottish stronghold, amassing his wealth and casting a covetous eye on the one piece of property his family had ever lost, that crumbling ruin of a castle to which Katlin was so stubbornly attracted.

  If indeed it was the castle and not the man himself who drew her.

  Or for that matter, if it was the castle not the woman who drew him.

  Damn them both!

  In his twenty-five years on earth, Charles could not remember anything that had angered him quite this much. He was almost incoherent with rage when Melissa wafted down the gilt and marble staircase, sized up the situation in a single glance and smiled sourly.

  "Wherever did you go?" she asked breezily as she stopped before him, a vision in pink lace and silk even to the frippery-filled bonnet adorning her pretty little head. "I looked all over for you when that dreadful fiasco was over but there was no sign of you."

  "I went to Innishffarin," he said distractedly. He was still too deep in his thoughts of Katlin—and Angus—to more than barely notice Melissa.

  She realized that and her smile faltered, but she persevered all the same. Her hand on his arm grew more insistent.

  "Oh, Charles," she said, "I simply can't stand this. You are such a noble and upstanding man, such a tribute to everything British manhood is supposed to be, and that Katlin Sinclair is taking the most shameful advantage of you. It's just enough to make me cry." She sniffed delicately and touched a lace-edged handkerchief to the corner of her eye.

  Charles glanced at her impatiently. What was the twit going on about? Katlin. ..advantage...him. Perhaps she wasn't such a twit after all.

  His hand closed around her arm hard. "What do you know?"

  Startled by the intensity of his demand, not to mention the crudeness of his touch, Melissa was unexpectedly aroused. She had always thought of herself as immune to such messy emotions, but Charles's sudden assertiveness struck a hidden chord within her.

  "Why, I..." she stuttered.

  His grip intensified. "Tell me."

  Melissa's cheeks flamed. This was becoming like one of those strange dreams she had sometimes, dreams of masterful men who swept her away from all restraint. Men like Angus Wyndham, who had barely spared her a glance. But Charles was doing that and more. All his attention was focused on her. It was a heady experience that sent her senses whirling.

  However, it also left her with a problem. There was very little she could tell him. She had seen nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing that did not relate directly to herself. This was not unusual. She rarely caught a glimpse of the world beyond her own narrow wishes and needs. Whatever might or might not be going on between Katlin Sinclair and Angus Wyndham was beyond her ken.

  But not beyond her imagination.

  Needs must, she thought, banishing her last faint attachment to such mundane considerations as honesty.

  "I saw them," she said and was quite pleased with the sorrowful note she managed to inject into her voice. Pressure brought out the best in her. Or at least the most adept.

  "Yes," she went on, widening her eyes to show them to their best advantage. "I saw them while we were supposed to be hunting." She made a scoffing sound. "Hunting, indeed. Did you ever see such a disgraceful display? Any decent huntsman would be banished from society for laying a drag like that. The fact that they had a meal ready for us at the end doesn't compensate. It was—"

  "Enough," Charles said testily. He no longer cared about the hunt. "What did you see?"

  Melissa frowned the tiniest bit before catching herself. With an effort, she forced her brow smooth. She had thought he would care about the hunt since he always went on about what a great sport it was. How it showed a man's true mettle, separated the peasants in all guises from the genuine nobility and so on. Privately, she loathed horses and despised the great rush through dirt and water to watch some disgusting animal meet its end. But if Charles liked it, she was hunting's greatest booster. Only now, he didn't seem to care.

  Katlin mattered more to him.

  Despair filled Melissa. It was all so unfair. She deserved Charles, not Katlin. Katlin was... different, unorthodox, strange in certain ways. Oh, she tried well enough to play the game but you always had the sense of someone else looking out through her gold-edged eyes, measuring, assessing and above all finding one wanting in all sorts of ways.

  The nerve of her.

  "I saw them," she repeated more firmly. "They were kissing."

  Such was the extent of Melissa's imagination. The truth of what had happened would have sent her into a swoon.

  Charles's face darkened. He, too, was limited in the range of his thought. So far as he was concerned, a kiss was enough to confirm all his suspicions.

  "You're sure?"

  Melissa nodded hastily. "One can hardly mistake that sort of thing, can one?''

  Charles was satisfied. Which was to say he was angrier than ever. Katlin had been an innocent woman, respectful of his suit and seemingly pleased to be the object of his intentions. Then she came to Scotland, specifically to Innishffarin, and everything changed.

  He would not tolerate that. He, Charles Devereux, would suffer no such loss to any man, much less to one such as Angus Wyndham.

  "She will pay," he said in a cold and implacable tone that caused Melissa to shiver with delight.

  She would have been less pleased had she been privy to Charles's thoughts. First Katlin would pay, and he would enjoy seeing that she did so. Then he would forgive her, for a kiss, while unacceptable did not soil her irretrievably. She was still virgin and still his to take, and in the taking to mold to his will in any manner he chose.

  So he believed.

  "I will have to return to Innishffarin," he muttered. The thought was distasteful, but he could not avoid it if his plan was to be carried out.

  Melissa froze. She pulled
away slightly and stared at him. "Why?"

  Charles barely heard her. He was too busy contemplating the things he would do to Katlin once she was in his power legally and in every other way. Perhaps he would not wait until then. Punishment offered all sorts of delightful possibilities.

  She would be cowed, repentant, submissive when he took her to wife. That would make it all the better.

  He let go of Melissa and turned away, but she persisted. "Why would you go back there? Why would you want anything to do with her now? Don't you understand how low she is, how she betrayed you and everything you are? She—"

  "Silence," Charles ordered, inadvertently affording Melissa yet another thrill. For good measure, he added, "Out of my way."

  She would have complied had she not been frozen in place. He thrust her aside and mounted the stairs. He was dirty, tired and hungry. First his needs would be seen to, then he would tend to Katlin.

  A grim smile curved his mouth. She would be all the better for his instruction. There was no merit in breaking an already submissive mare. The victory lay in crushing a spirit, and Katlin was, far and away, the most spirited woman he had ever known.

  That rather surprised him, for it hadn't been apparent before. But it was now, and he wanted her all the more because of it.

  One thought rang clearest in his mind: Angus Wyndham would not have her. On that, he was determined.

  ***

  He'd never understood women, Angus decided. Even in those fondly remembered days when he'd been roaming the world, putting in at whatever port suited his whim, he'd never really gotten a handle on them.

  But what man ever did? He'd enjoyed his share of the female sex and he'd had a rollicking good time of it, kicking up his heels from one side of the world to the other.

  But this was Scotland and this was different.

  She'd walked away from him again.

  This bit of fluff from London town—it was only days since he'd thought of her like that, but it seemed eons—had turned down his proposal and then, not content with that, allowed him to make passionate love to her—sweet lord, it had been passionate—and then calmly gotten up, dressed herself and flounced off.

  All right, not flounced. She didn't do that any more than she pouted, cajoled or sulked. The traits he'd found abhorrent in society women, and which he avoided at all costs, were singularly lacking in Katlin. She was what she was—the most infuriating woman in God's creation.

  His fist pounded the arm of the leather chair in which he sat, nursing a brandy that was not his first. He was seated in his library, his feet up on an ottoman, in a pose suggestive of male relaxation and reflection. Nothing could have been further from the truth. His body was tensely coiled, and inside he seethed.

  Worst of all, he'd let her go.

  He didn't deserve the name of Wyndham. Every one of his ancestors must be rising up in renunciation of him. He took another swallow of the brandy and contemplated the amber liquid in the golden light of late afternoon.

  His eye fell on the portrait of Francis Wyndham facing him. The late laird looked particularly pensive. Angus frowned as he remembered Ratlin's insistence that Francis was still around. He'd been so sure it was only a ploy to win his attention, but now he was forced to adjust his thinking on that. Beyond an obvious physical extent, she didn't seem interested in his attentions at all.

  What about Francis then? Was there any possible truth to it?

  Katlin had been quite set on it. She'd even claimed to have seen him.

  If he was around and if he was showing himself, it might be useful to have a word with him.

  Angus shook his head ruefully. He'd drunk little of the brandy but he was having thoughts that would do a regular drunkard proud. Was he so desperate for a way to make Katlin see sense that he'd go to a ghost for help?

  Of course, Francis Wyndham was reputed to have been a dab hand with the ladies in his time. Maybe it wouldn't hurt—provided that no one saw him—to see if there was anything to Katlin's tale.

  All of which explained how it came to be that as evening was falling, Angus set off once again for Innishffarin. He was not alone. Charles had left the St. Johns's manor as soon as he was clean and fed.

  He hurried his manservant, demanding that he do everything at lightning speed and complained at every passing instant. Finally, when the fellow was pale and shaking with the strain, Charles was satisfied. He jerked his head impatiently, dismissing him, checked his cravat one last time in the mirror, and set off.

  It was a greater distance from the St. Johns's house than from Wyndham Manor but Charles arrived first. He left his horse tethered to a tree behind the castle and made his way on foot.

  His intent was to take Katlin by surprise, and he succeeded.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Katlin had finished her supper, eaten in front of the fire in the great hall, since it seemed the height of foolishness to insist on greater state. There was a dining room that, if she ever got the table fixed, would manage fifty easily, but she couldn't imagine herself using it in solitary splendor.

  Yet the kitchen wasn't quite the thing, either. Mrs. Fergus was clearly against the idea when Katlin broached it, believing as the housekeeper did in the notion that everyone was better off when certain social divisions were sensibly adhered to. A bit of tea and shortbread was apparently permissible; full-fledged dinner was not.

  Seamus had started a fire against the spring chill before going off somewhere with Sarah. Katlin had kindly told her maid it wasn't necessary to attend her that evening. She would see herself to bed.

  Isaiah had left a surprisingly decent library, which she'd had little chance to rummage through. When her tray was cleaned away, she resolved to do just that. Clutching a lamp, she made her way there.

  The room was far from the splendid sanctum at Wyndham. It was smaller and appeared to have been converted from a storeroom, probably for weapons. There were no windows save for narrow firing slits.

  The lantern cast dancing shadows over the ceiling-high shelves of books. Most were very old; Katlin's excitement mounted as she realized that many dated back centuries. A suspicion formed in her mind that Isaiah and her other forebears had not so much collected the library as they had succeeded to it, along with everything else at Innishffarin.

  If she was right and some long-dead Wyndham had been responsible for the collection, she might find some clues to the treasure Francis and so many others had hunted.

  But with so many books to search through, she had scant hope of success, at least right then. At best, she might find a good novel to take up to bed with her.

  But no, for there, in a middle shelf only a few feet from the door, she found a slim volume whose spine was engraved in gold filigree: Tales of the Wyndham Treasure, Search for Same.

  It was almost too good to believe. She took the book with trembling hands and held it a little distance away as she blew the dust from it. If her grandfather had ever delved within its pages, he had not done so for many years.

  She went to the hall with the book, set the lamp on a table near the fire and curled up to take a look. There were not more than a hundred pages, all printed in the tight, cursive type favored some two centuries before. Katlin was unaccustomed to it and found it heavy going.

  She began flipping through the pages, searching for some hint of the author's conclusions. Was there or was there not a Wyndham treasure? The author, a young parson named Theeler, couldn't seem to make up his mind. But Grandfather Isaiah had not had any such problem, for there in his distinctive hand was what he thought of the matter.

  On a page where Theeler theorized the treasure might exist, Isaiah had penned, "Poppycock!" And on another where the young parson waxed eloquent on various mysterious explanations for why it had never been found was the short, pungent conclusion: "Twaddle!"

  That answered one question, at least. If Grandfather Isaiah had looked for the treasure, he had given up a long time ago.

  Yet the book was well-thu
mbed, as though a succession of readers had gone through it at length.

  Katlin settled more comfortably on the couch and began to read. The going was not easy. The Reverend Theeler appeared to have been an excitable sort. He used exclamation points with distressing regularity, as in:

  I accepted mine host's kind invitation to explore the demesne beginning with the castle proper. Never have I been privileged to see a mightier example of the ancient art of fortification! Glorious Innishffarin stands proud and stalwart against the sea, triumphing over all who challenge her! Alas, that includes this poor scholar who, despite labors extending over many weeks, was unable to satisfy the Magnificent Secret of the Wyndham Treasure!

  ***

  And so on, in that general vein, for a hundred pages. Katlin sighed. She didn't consider herself overly critical about what she read, but the Reverend Theeler could have saved her and generations of others a great deal of trouble by obeying the advice of his contemporary, W. Shakespeare, namely that brevity was the soul of wit.

  It was very comfortable by the fire but she was afraid that if she stayed there she would end up falling asleep on the couch. It had, after all, been a rather tumultuous day.

  Smiling a tad weakly at her own talent for understatement, she took book and lamp and made her way upstairs to her tower room.

  She encountered no one on the way and passed through no cold patches, which was just as well. She was not in the mood for company.

  After undressing and donning a sensible night robe, she slipped between the sheets. A sigh of pleasure escaped her. Some thoughtful soul had been kind enough to pass a warming pan over them. As the room had no source of heat of its own and the spring nights were cool, the gesture was most welcome.

  As the warmth seeped into her, she spared a thought for the coming winter. Either she would have to move elsewhere in the castle or some way must be found to heat the tower. In olden days, they had undoubtedly used charcoal braziers along with plenty of fur throws. The thought was appealing until she realized she was envisioning herself reclining in such barbaric surroundings with Angus by her side.